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One needs no introduction to the poet, novelist,
dramatist, painter, musician and mystic
philosopher Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. The
fourteenth child of Debendranath Tagore, he was
born in May 1861. From an early age he took over
the reigns of the huge ancestral fortune he
inherited, and looked after its management. He
was sent to England to study law, but returned
as he found it uninteresting.
Being in constant touch with rural life, Tagore
felt nearer to the dry plains, rivers and
mountains of Bengal. He was inspired a lot by
nature and humanity. His poems depict a profound
feeling of nearness to the spirit. Tagore won
the Nobel Prize for Literature for Gitanjali in
1913. He was knighted in 1915, but due to the
barbaric act of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre,
he renounced the knighthood. He founded the
Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan, for a
holistic approach towards education.
A renaissance icon, Tagore left behind a huge
legacy of work. These run into twenty-nine
volumes. He died in Calcutta in August 1941.
Gitanjali
"The progress of our soul is like a perfect
poem. It has an infinite idea which once
realised makes all movements full of meaning and
joy. But if we detach its movements from that
ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite
rest and only see the infinite motion, then
existence appears to us a monstrous evil,
impetuously rushing towards an unending
aimlessness."
Gitanjali, Tagore's Nobel winning masterpiece
was first published in 1912. These immensely
touching verses were written in Bengali in 1910,
after he lost his father, wife, second daughter
and youngest son. Later he translated these
verses when he set sail for England a third
time. He showed the translations to his friend
William Rothenstein after much persuasion.
Rothenstein subsequently showed it to William
Butler Yeats, who went on to write the
Introduction for the book.
Renowned for its lyrical beauty and spiritual
poignancy, Gitanjali is a classic in its own
right, which won Tagore the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1913. |
